rockstaryuzu

This. I feel like this is true. If it wasn't skating, then it would have been something else, maybe. Some people just have the light.

I look at him, and I feel all those things too...and I don't feel them when I look at other skaters. It's him, himself. Something about him. But what that is exactly, I still can't figure out. He's like a lighthouse but I don't quite know where he's showing the way to.

This might be a bit of a silly question to ask the Planet, but I've been mulling this over for a while now and I can't come up with a satisfactory answer. So, here it is: Why do you think Yuzu is so important? I don't mean, why is he popular, or why are you a fan...but rather, what's his significance in the grander scheme of things? I ask this because in some ways, his phenomenon doesn't make sense. For example, when he got injured last season, I really felt deeply that it was a tragedy and genuinely prayed he would recover for the Olympics. That's not a normal response for me, and I wasn't a full-fledged fanyu yet at the time. I found myself wondering why I got so caught up in it. And if you look at Yuzu's work outside the rink...he's done great things for the 3/11 recovery effort. However, if there was no Hanyu, would there have been someone else to step in to that role? Why him? If you think about it, why does this skinny kid from Sendai with all the big ambitions matter so much?

Doesn't it just make you want to be one of those stuffed toys? My vote for most emotional program is definitely 2018 Olympic Seimei. I loved 2017 Worlds H&L, but I didn't spend 3 months praying for Yuzu's health before that one.

Oh the irony...

I don't have problems seeing ice dance as a sport equal to singles or pairs. But maybe that's because when I started out as a figure skating fan, the singles discipline included compulsory figures, which have the distinction of being simultaneously the most un-sport-like and yet most easy to score objectively of all the disciplines. To me, ice dance is basically the paired-up version of compulsory figures...so yeah, I have no problem with it being considered a sport on the same level as all the others.

Hey well, at least he knows himself!

Have you ever watched ballet live? Especially the men? You try doing some of these and then tell me how much athletics are in ballet. Don't forget that ballet dancers don't have the benefits of the speed and momentum that figure skaters can gather. A lot of these jumps are executed mainly from standing or running starts. The dancers are throwing themselves six feet in the air by muscle power alone, no physics to help them along. Let's just say that if it involves moving your body artistically to music, it's athletic, and leave it at that.

I consider things like warhorses and classical music/ballet-ish programs to be universal because they usually translate well across many cultures. I am indeed talking about more ethnic-type dances and music. For example, flamenco and tango are sort of kind of warhorses, but they also have a strong flavour of the cultures they're from. I think it would be interesting to watch Yuzu dive deep into what's beyond that in terms of dance inspiration. Remember he still has to make singles' programs out of it. So, things like Ukrainian dancing where the men leap and twirl from squatting positions, or Irish dancing, or even capoeira might work as inspirations.

Well, ice dance is to some extent a matter of taste, just like dance is, and not everyone likes Irish dancing. The thing about B/K is that, just like the Duchesnays before them, they were big innovators who bucked a lot of the prevailing wisdom ( which was for very 'classic', lyrical dances and/or strictly ballroom) of ice dance at the time, and who should have had that recognized with a medal or two. It's no coincidence that they won Worlds the year after the Salt Lake City judging corruption debacle caused ISU to rethink their scoring systems. But to bring this back on topic, it would be really fun to see what Yuzu would come up with if he tried to interpret another culture's dance forms in his programs. It's something most people are not used to seeing, either - an Asian man basically appropriating a bit of white culture.

That would be very creative! And for the record, I have not forgotten Shae and Victor's Riverdance. They should have won Nagano with it, they only didn't because of corrupt judging.

Yuzu trying to properly Riverdance would be the source of much kuyashi. I think his feet are fast enough but the rhythms would be very different from what he's used to.

I always knew H&L Helsinki was one for the ages. Now it's official. A random thought occurred to me this morning...what if, when he posted that photo of the beer can, Brian was trying to give us a hint for next season? Like maybe he's saying " Don't take your eyes off Yuzu, surprises are in store? " Like, maybe, it'll be a Riverdancing Yuzu in the SP...😝 Followed by. Heavy Metal Yuzu in the FS...🤣

The beginning bit, where he has his white jacket done up, he's doing traditional figures, which skaters were scored on up until the late 80's - early 90's. But he's doing them so fast and smoothly! If you look at old videos of figures being done, you'll see that it's more norm to go quite slowly.

Even so, this is out there.

OMG. Is this a sign that Javi has also succumbed to the media day wait madness? Joking aside, this kind of thing is why Javi pretty well defines the term "good sport"...

What's annoying is that there's so much they could to make the technical scores more objective. PCS is never gonna be.

Sorry for the double post!!!

Can't watch the video, but I love the thumbnail. The fedora suits him so well.

Who knows? I'm going on the assumption that most sponsorship deals do end eventually. Although if Lotte wants to keep this up and start a TV series "Making Chocolate with Yuzu" after he retires, I'd be quite delighted.

Didn't he though? Anyway, the arm hair Twitter post...if you click through, someone in the comments has a link posted to the full video and it's worth a watch. Yuzu is being very cute and extremely extra and also, for some reason, learning how to temper chocolate? (Japanese sponsorship deals seem to be very different from the rest of the world LOL). You can see him trying to memorize the chocolatier's moves as she shows him how.... it's just like choreography. Also, don't miss his adorable mouthful-of-chocolate-cake voice at the end. It instantly made me want to cook for him. What do you mean, I'm gushing? If this video is any indication, by the time his partnership with Lotte ends, he'll know everything he needs to launch a career in the chocolate arts.

If memory serves, that was because it was so bloody blatant and there was actual proof that it happened, not just suspicion. And also, it took place in a country where freedom of the press is pretty near sacred. There's no American journalist who'd be scared to cover a story like that for fear of repercussions or reprisals.

Media backing? I don't know about that. My recollection was the media ( not the commentators who were calling the programs) found proof of corrupt judging and exposed it, after the competition had taken place. Which is actually one of the correct and rightful roles of journalism in the public interest. My point is that judges don't listen to what the commentators are saying during the programs and then use that to arrive at the final score. And the judges are in a far better position to see what's going on on the ice than any of the commentators. So to bring this back to where we started, a jump's not UR until a judge rules it's UR, and all the commentary by sports journalists in the world doesn't change that. Hence the commentary is not worth mentioning. Anyway guys, this is the last I'm going to say on the subject because I feel like we're derailing the thread.

WOW. that's incredible.

This is one particular instance that I don't know much about, since my TV sports channels are TSN, CBC, and CTV. And sometimes NBC. Just looking at what you wrote, I wouldn't call your particular comment an attack, but I'm sure many of the comments directed at the commentator in this instance were attacks. Now I'm not going defend the CBC, because I happen to think that at least two of their female FS commentators are certified idiots. But I've seen them bashed online over really innocuous comments they made that didn't even have much to do with the skating at all, and frankly, it was ridiculous. Bottom line: sports commentary isn't rocket science, and a lot of the people that do it make mistakes, but I don't see the point in setting the bar too high in terms of what one expects of them, given what the nature of the job is. If they're outright lying to the public, that's one thing. But if they're just blabbing away trying to say something sort of related to the skating because that's why they're there, then they can and probably should be ignored. And even if they are biased ( I'm looking at you, American sports channels), in the long term, their words don't change the competition results one bit. So why waste the electrons and pixels it takes to complain about them.